First, let me make something clear: throughout the Fifties, naked did not mean nude, not in films, not in the pinup magazines, not even in the adult men’s magazines. It meant bare backs and bottoms, a lot of cleavage, and sometimes a partially exposed breast with an occasional nipple showing. And, as the public reaction to Jane Russell demonstrated, a large bosom was enough to incite imaginary nudity.
—BETTIE PAGE RULES! BY JIM SILKE
“WOULDN’T it be great, Tilda?” Cooper said. “We’d see each other every day! We could gossip and shop during lunch, and—”
“You’re scaring me, Cooper. That’s almost exactly what I told Nicole.”
“No wonder she looked like she was about to spew. Talk about having your worst nightmare come true!”
“Being somebody else’s nightmare has always been a dream of mine.”
They were walking up the sidewalk on Newbury Street, stepping over the piles of dirty snow left over from the previous week’s nor’easter. Knowing that she had to come to town to see Jillian, Tilda had scheduled an interview for that evening, and when Cooper heard who she was going to see, he volunteered to act as her photographer, just so he could come along. Normally he’d have been working late on a Monday—he had to get the copy for the next week’s issue finished by quitting time Tuesday—but he’d arranged to come in early the next day to make sure he made his deadline.
“Why don’t we grab a cab?” Cooper asked the second time he nearly slipped on frozen slush.
“Because we need the exercise,” Tilda said. “If you don’t want to go—”
“Oh, no you don’t!” Cooper said. “Not after I missed the other interview you did with her—the one you didn’t even tell me about!”
“Why would I take a gay man to see a former pinup queen? Jean-Paul might not mind you looking at other men, but women?”
“Sandra Sechrest is different,” Cooper said reverently. “She’s a classic. It’ll be like meeting Bettie Page!”
“That reminds me. Speaking of Bettie Page, don’t.”
“Come again?”
“Don’t mention Bettie Page. It’s a sore spot.”
“Got it.” By then, they’d reached Massachusetts Avenue, and were heading toward the neighborhood where Sechrest lived. The sidewalk was clearer, but the January wind was considerably stronger. “Not that I’m complaining, but why are you interviewing her again? In fact, why did you interview her in the first place? I thought Jillian turned the story idea down.”
“You guys keep forgetting that I do sell to other markets. The full interview was for a magazine for senior citizens with attitude, and shorter versions went to a men’s magazine that targets older men, a women’s studies journal, a nostalgia magazine, and a newsletter for amateur photographers.”
“Nothing for the children’s market?”
She ignored him. He knew as well as she did that the only way to stay afloat as a freelance entertainment reporter was to rewrite the same article for as many markets as possible. The number of pieces she’d sold about Sandra wasn’t even close to her record. “When I first interviewed Sandra, I told her how other former celebrities have been using the Internet to take advantage of their former fame, and back in November she and her niece put up a site to sell autographed pictures, T-shirts, and so forth. She’s doing really well with it, and today I’m talking to her about running a Web-based business so I can write a how-to piece.”
“Is there a market for that?”
“Yes, but not a high-paying one, which is why I don’t want to take a cab. The fare would eat up most of my profits.”
“Just wait!” Cooper said with gleeful anticipation. “You won’t have to worry about rewriting every story umpteen times, or scrimping on expenses for very much longer. You’ll just have to write one story per topic. And you’ll have an expense account. Company plastic!”
“Geez, Cooper, can we hold off on counting chickens? Jillian hasn’t exactly made a formal offer, and I don’t know that I’ll take it if she does.”
“Jillian wouldn’t have said anything if she wasn’t serious! And why wouldn’t you take the job? No more scrounging for assignments, no more sending out query letters to every magazine in the known universe, no more pitching a dozen stories to get one lousy assignment.”
“It’s not that bad!”
“Oh yeah? Then why is it we’re not taking a cab?”
There was no real answer to that, so Tilda didn’t bother to devise one as they continued their trudge.
“We’ve got to go shopping,” Cooper said suddenly.
“Why?”
“You know how Jillian is about the clothes we wear in the office. If you can’t be high fashion, you at least need to be stylish.”
“Thanks for the self-esteem.”
“Let me rephrase that. You have amazing style, but it’s not exactly working-in-an-office style.”
Tilda glanced at her reflection in the plate-glass window they were passing. She was currently wearing lace-up black Doc Marten boots and a thigh-length black parka, along with a red knit hat with rhinestone skulls to cover her black, curly hair with a matching scarf around her throat. The outfit concealed by her winter gear—a well-worn pair of black jeans and a dark purple tunic-length sweater—wasn’t exactly corporate wear either. And that was what she’d worn to a business meeting.
“You may have a point,” she conceded.
“Now if you put aside a bit of each paycheck to spend on clothes—”
“Cheep, cheep, Cooper.”
“No, don’t buy cheap—buy classic.”
“I meant that you’re counting unhatched chicks again. Can we change the subject?”
“Sorry. I’m just so excited for you.”
Tilda was leaning toward excited, too, but she wasn’t sure if she was as excited as she should be. Sure, a steady paycheck and actual benefits had definite appeal. Then again, setting her own hours and picking her own stories was nothing to sneeze at, either, let alone spending most of her time in a Nicole-free environment. She was just as glad she didn’t have to make a decision right away.
Finally they arrived at their destination, an elderly but well-maintained building in the South End. They stepped into the paneled entry way, and a few seconds after pushing the buzzer, a young woman already bundled up for outside came to the door to let them in.
“Hi, Tilda,” she said.
“How’s it going, Lil? Lil, this is my friend Cooper Christianson. He’s my photographer.” Actually, Cooper was no better with a camera than she was, and it was her camera anyway, but Tilda felt the excuse sounded more professional than, “He’s planning to dine out on the story of having met a real-life pinup queen for the next six months.”
“Pleased to meet you, Cooper. Aunt Sandra’s waiting for you in her place. I hate to rush off, but I want to get back home before the snow starts.”
“You’re in Bedford, right?”
Lil nodded. “I don’t think my street has been decently plowed since the last snow, so I figured I better head home now or I’ll never make it.”
“Good luck,” Tilda said, as the younger woman braced herself to step into the cold air.
As she and Cooper walked down the hallway toward Sandra Sechrest’s apartment, Tilda said, “Lil has been handling the Web design and whatever coding Sandra needs. She does a good job, too.”
The former pinup queen herself was waiting in the doorway. In her heyday, Sandra Sechrest had been known as Sandy Sea Chest and had specialized in nautical themes: skimpy sailor dresses, mermaid costumes, and revealing pirate outfits. These days, she usually wore some variation of her current ensemble: a mauve velour jogging suit that nobody would ever wear to jog in.
“Tilda! Good to see you!” Though the sea chest for which she’d been famous was no longer so generously filled as it had been when she’d been a photographer’s model, her hair was the same color of red that had contrasted so nicely with the copious amount of fair skin she’d displayed in countless magazine spreads. Only her hands, badly twisted with arthritis, betrayed her true age.
“Sandra, this is my friend Cooper Christianson. He’s a longtime admirer of your work.”
“Work, she calls it. For years it was dirty pictures, but now I’ve got a body of work.” Sandra winked at Cooper. “It’s a shame I don’t have the body for the work anymore! Come on in, kids.”
Like many older Boston dwellings, Sandra’s condo included oddities that revealed that it had started out life as part of a larger home but had subsequently been chopped up into bite-sized living spaces. Sometimes the unusual shapes that resulted were awkward, but fortunately for Sandra, her long, narrow stretch of rooms was just eccentric enough to be charming, especially with the clean-lined wooden furniture that kept it from looking cluttered, and a scattering of mirrors which provided the illusion of space.
“Have a seat,” she said, and settled herself on the couch while Tilda and Cooper divested themselves of their coats, scarves, hats, and other cold-weather accessories.
“How’s business?” Tilda asked as she sat next to Sandra, and pulled a pad out of the black leather satchel she used as both purse and briefcase.
“Booming,” Sandra said with a big smile. “And I’m not just saying that for the article. We had to reorder T-shirts three times to meet the Christmas rush, and once more since then. Plus we’re selling eight-by-tens as fast as I can sign them.” She looked at her hands ruefully. “Which isn’t as fast as I’d like it to be. But I can’t complain. We’re doing great, and this is in a bad economy!”
“That’s awesome,” Tilda said, and they got down to the formal part of the interview. Her previous conversations with Sandra had been focused on the modeling itself, with a good dollop of gossip about sex to sweeten the pot. This story was about the nuts and bolts of running a Web business: getting eyeballs to the site and keeping them coming, taking advantage of search engines and eBay shops, and the use of PayPal. Of course, the fact that the product being sold was sex wouldn’t hurt this piece, either.
Meanwhile, Cooper took shots of Sandra, the miniature brass and teak sea chest on her coffee table, and even the computer and scanner that Lil used to keep Sandra’s website up and running. Tilda would rather have had Lil there as well, but knew from earlier meetings that the Web designer was camera shy, which was ironic, given her aunt’s claim to fame. As for Sandra, the camera loved her as much as it ever had, and she had a knack for being able to keep the conversation going while still managing to present her best angles to Cooper’s lens.
They were discussing the online community that had developed around her site’s bulletin board when Sandra said, “You wouldn’t believe the people who’ve come out of the woodwork since I started the site. I’ve gotten e-mail from models and photographers I hadn’t heard from in decades.”
“Really?” Tilda said, eager to add more names to her database. Of course, it might not be worth the effort if she was going to take the job with Entertain Me!. Since Jillian had already turned down her pitch about pinup queens, she wouldn’t be able to try another for a while. Then she firmly reminded herself that nothing was definite yet. “Anybody I might have heard of?”
“A few,” Sandra said. “I hoped some of them might want to join in on the business—more people means more attention on the Web, you know. But one found Jesus, and the others went into different lines of work, so they don’t want to make a big deal over their pictures.” She shrugged. “I’ve still got feelers out.”
“Let me know if you find anybody who’d be interested in talking to me.”
“Will do. Now the models may have gotten shy, but not the photographers. I’ve had three invitations to dinner from guys in the camera clubs I used to pose for, plus a marriage proposal. And that’s not the best part. Cooper, would you mind getting that envelope from the desk?”
He got up long enough to grab a plump cardboard photo mailer and handed it to her.
She tapped it. “You know what I’ve got here?”
“More pictures?” Tilda asked.
“Got it in one. There was this one set of pictures I did where I was dressed as a pirate who’d captured some sweet young thing. I tied her up and made her walk the plank and so forth. These days, they’d probably have crotch shots and tongues and all that. We settled for spanking.”
“I remember that pictorial—you and Virginia Pure,” Cooper said. “It was great spanking.”
Sandra smiled indulgently. “Well, this is a batch of pictures from that same shoot.”
“Really? I thought that photographer died,” Tilda said.
“Yes and no. Red Connors put the shoot together, and he did pass away years back, God bless him. But this was a special case. The pirate ship setup was pretty elaborate for those days, and Red had to rent props and equipment on top of paying the two of us girls. He was nervous he wasn’t going to be able to sell the pictures for enough money to make it all back, so he invited some guys from the camera clubs to come in and shoot, too, as long as they didn’t get in his way. They paid me and the other girl extra, and paid him, too, so he could be sure of making a profit.”
Tilda saw that Cooper looked confused, and thought she had better give him a little background. “Back then, there were a lot of camera clubs for amateur photographers. They’d hire models and then all show up to take pictures of them.”
Sandra nodded. “The pros didn’t always let the amateurs in on their sessions—they didn’t want the competition—but like I said, Red was anxious about the dollars. He made the guys in the club promise to keep the pictures for their own use and not sell them, and as far as I know, they all kept their word.” She tapped the envelope again. “This guy did, anyway. It turns out that he lives just up the road in Medford. He got in touch with me through the site, and asked if I wanted the pictures, and of course I said I did. They’ve never been printed anywhere before, and I’m going to debut them on my site.”
“Wow!” Cooper said.
She gave him a coquettish smile. It was honestly coquettish, too, not the parody that was the best most women Tilda’s age could muster. “Would you like to take a look?”
“You mean it?”
“Sure, why not? They’ll be on the Web next week anyway.” She opened the envelope and pulled out a stack of photos, and while Tilda and she looked on, Cooper put the camera aside so he could reverently lift each photo.
Tilda was fascinated by one that showed Sandra and the other model in street clothes. Both were wearing neat suits with high heel pumps, gloves, and cunning hats.
Sandra saw what she was looking at, and shook her head. “He must have taken that one when we first got there. Can you believe how we used to dress, just to take our clothes off? And those were everyday outfits!”
“You looked great,” Tilda said, “but I bet what you’re wearing now is a lot more comfortable.”
Meanwhile, Cooper was going for the skin. “These are amazing,” he said. “I can really see where you and the other model loosened up later in the session.”
Sandra giggled. “Yeah, we did, didn’t we?” She pulled one photo out of the stack. “The guys gave us a little extra for this pose.”
“I’ll bet they did! Whatever they paid, it was worth it.”
“Cooper!” Sandra said in mock shock. “I see that ring on your finger—what would your wife say?”
“Husband, actually,” he said. “And Jean-Paul wouldn’t mind—he knows your pictures helped prove that I’m gay.”
“Come again?”
“The fact is, my whole family knew by the time I hit high school, but one uncle had it in his head that he could ‘cure’ me. One day he showed up and said he wanted to take me out for lunch, but on the way home from the restaurant, he pulled out one of his prized girlie magazines and told me to look at it alone that night. That’s the one that had the pirate spread.”
“It was one of my more popular ones,” Sandra said modestly.
“It opened my eyes, I can tell you that. If anything would have set me straight, those pictures would have. But though I tried to … appreciate them, nothing happened. Uncle Mac asked about it the next day, and when I told him, he just patted me on the shoulder and said that if those pictures wouldn’t do it for me, no woman ever would.”
“Cooper, that is the sweetest thing I ever heard,” Sandra said.
Tilda wasn’t sure if sweet was the right word for it, but it did explain why Cooper had been so interested in coming along. Before Sandra and Cooper got the urge to share any more Hallmark moments, she asked, “What happened to the other model? I’ve done a fair amount of research on pinup queens, and I don’t remember seeing many pictures of her. I’m guessing Virginia Pure wasn’t her real name.”
“Wasn’t that the dumbest thing?” Sandra said. “Her real name was Esther something. Esther Marie … Esther Marie Martin, that’s it. What a name to hang on her! She had the cutest Southern accent you ever heard, and used to guzzle iced tea with so much sugar in it you’d think it was syrup. She was from some little bitty town in Virginia, which is what gave her the idea for the name—I don’t think she even made the connection between Virginia and virgin, even though she probably was one. Esther was one of those sweet young things who came to New York to be a star on Broadway, but she wasn’t tough enough or lucky enough. She kind of fell into modeling, but she never did learn to like it. Some people are comfortable in their skin, and some aren’t—poor Virginia didn’t think she was pretty enough because she wasn’t as big busted as I was.”
“Not many women are,” Tilda said, resisting the impulse to check out her own rack.
“Big breasts aren’t everything, not even in that line of work,” Sandra said. “Red was really pleased with that shoot, and wanted Virginia and me to do more together, but that day was the last time I saw her. She started feeling sick near the end of the session, and I don’t know if it was because she was really coming down with something or if the modeling had finally gotten to her. Next thing I knew, she’d left New York to go back home, and I never heard from her again. Broke a few hearts, too.”
“I thought it was ‘look, don’t touch’ with the camera club members?”
“It was supposed to be,” Sandra said with a little smile. “Most of the guys were too shy to even speak to us outside of shoots. But not all.”
“And?”
“And … And I could use a tonic. How about you two?”
Tilda admitted defeat, and both she and Cooper accepted the offer.
Sandra went into the tiny kitchen to fetch Cokes and a bowl of pretzels, and once they were all settled again, she said, “So, Cooper, do you know who Bettie Page was?”
He looked at Tilda, but she had no way of giving him a hint of how to respond, so he cautiously said, “I think I’ve heard the name.”
Sandra rolled her eyes. “Everybody has heard of her, but nobody knows that I taught her everything she knew about posing.”
“Really?”
“You bet! It was me who taught her to walk in high heels, too. Do you ever do drag?”
Tilda leaned in, curious about that herself, since she’d never dared ask.
But Cooper said, “Just for Halloween, and I stay away from heels.”
“Well, there’s a real art to wearing them gracefully, You know what I’m talking about, don’t you, Tilda?”
“Practice, practice, practice,” she said. “And never wear heels in the snow.”
Sandra laughed. “That’s a good place to start.” She took a swallow of Coke and said, “Is there anything else you need for your article?”
As hints went, Sandra’s was remarkably polite, so Tilda took a quick look at her notes. “I think I’ve got it. If I do seem to be missing something, I’ll give you a call.”
“Hate to rush you two off, but I’ve got company coming and I want to make myself beautiful.”
“Don’t waste your time,” Cooper said. “You’re already there.”
Sandra beamed. “Cooper, if you were straight and maybe twenty years older, I’d just keep you and cancel my date.”
There was a flurry as Tilda gathered up notes and pens, she and Cooper suited up for the winter weather, and Sandra walked them to the building’s front door. The predicted snow had arrived, and as Tilda stepped unwillingly into the quarter-inch that had already fallen, she looked back and saw Sandra waving at them cheerfully.